A FORMER Hinckley area school caretaker who traded nearly 50,000 images of the worst kind of child pornography has been jailed for 40 months.

Judge Christopher Metcalf told Brian Frank Adnam that the offences showed “real depravity” and that the images were some of the worst he had had to consider.

Sixty-six-year-old Adnam, of no fixed address but who previously lived in the Hinckley area and worked at a local school, pleaded guilty on Monday at Leicester Crown Court to 10 counts each of making and distributing a total of 49,532 indecent images of children between November 24 2009 and September 15 2010.

The images, of various levels of decency ranged from Level 1, the least serious, to Level 5, the most serious. Most were photographs but there were also movie clips, the court heard.

Prosecutor James Varley said Adnam had a large number of high and low level images “of in many cases very young children – to use the defendant’s own words – from birth upwards”.

The scale of the depravity meant not all images had been checked in order to protect the sanity of the police officers involved.

Mr Varley said Adnam “traded” with others on a closed computer network and images were stored “much in the same way that one can organise a library”.

He added: “A visitor could go to the library and find precisely what they wanted [using a particular software application].

“This is a private network between two computer users which allowed him and others to browse the computer as if they [the images] were their own.”

When police arrested Adnam at home last December, he told them the visit had been expected. “He said no-one is in any danger. It is just pictures on a screen,” added Mr Varley.

A computer and CDs were seized.

Images were disguised in a folder marked “personal banking documents”. Some of the files were given children’s names.

Mr Varley said the defendant, of previous good character, who had been in touch with a man in the Netherlands, claimed he had “far more stuff available”. But he had not put it on the hard drive because he could only do this when his wife was not around.

Mr Varley said: “I appreciate that his wife and his children had no knowledge of what was going on and once he was arrested he made a clean breast of what was going on – and they subsequently disowned him.”

Mitigating on Adnam’s behalf, barrister James House said: “He has accepted from the outset his guilt in this matter.”

“There is no suggestion here of monetary gain. This was shared between like-minded individuals.”

Mr House said his client had been married for more than 40 years and they had two children and two grandchildren.

Adnam’s behaviour was often described as an addiction and Mr House said: “That’s what it became. This man fully accepts the gratification he got through [doing] it.”

He contacted a charity organisation to get help and had clearly shown “shame and remorse for what he has done”.

Judge Metcalf said he accepted no-one in Adnam’s household knew what was going on until the loft was searched – or saw any images.

The judge described the defendant’s response when confronted by police as “just worrying”. He said: “To suggest there were no victims shows a complete lack of understanding of the behaviour in which you were indulging.

“The public will no doubt be outraged by this sexual gratification, the scale of your obsession and also the enormous number of images. They show real depravity – not a word I am keen on using very often in court – but they demonstrate truly deviant sexual thinking.”

Some of the children on the images were between the ages of six and 10. One could be heard crying while being sexually abused.

The court was told none of the offences took place on school premises.

It was not said where Adnam previously worked, but he is believed to have lived in Burbage. Leicestershire County Council has declined to name the school, or to confirm his former occupation, only that he was a “non-teaching member of staff”.

For the distribution offences, he was given 40 months imprisonment, with a concurrent two years for making indecent images, making three years four months in all.

The judge issued an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order against Adnam. He is forbidden from having unsupervised contact with children or working unsupervised with children and must not use a computer unless supervised.

Judge Metcalf ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the computer, hard drive and CDs.

After the case a Leicestershire Constabulary spokesman told The Hinckley Times: “All indecent photographs of children are distressing and anyone downloading them should know that a real child has been sexually abused to produce the photographs.

“Anyone downloading the images plays a part in that child’s abuse by creating a demand for the photograph. This case was particularly disturbing as the offender had been sharing a vast library of material including the graphic abuse of young children.”